The daycare's director has asked me to do a presentation about childhood allergies in a couple weeks.

I have about 10-15 minutes, and only 1 other parent deals with allergies. I have no idea where to start... Some stats, of course, a little bit about challenges in managing allergies in a daycare settings... but I would love suggestions if anyone has done this before, or if you just have good ideas!

then go on to intigration of food allergic children in school setting.
if time.
add staff and parental duties.
agreed protocals, and treatement plans.

get visuals, some trainer epi pens.
have a display of some packageing with nut trace warnings , and put a sign up that says ' can you spot the nut'?
try and find soap/shampoo./salad bags/over counter meds/ that have warnings/nuts in.

so without explanation the audience can start to grasp the complexcity of living with life threatening food allergies.

end talk with a chat about all working together to support the child to cope with what may turn out to be a life long allergy. and keeping them safe gvies them the time to learn the survival skills they need.
with the aim of being a 'confidant survivior of food allergies'

Be sure to mention the issues of cross contamination. The importance of washing hands before and after eating so that toys and equipment does not become contaminated with traces of protein. These children will place hands and objects into their mouths. You might tie this in with the public health department's recommendations to wash hands as a way of avoiding colds and flus (win-win).

My son's school asks me to prepare a talk every year. I've given this talk to 3 - 8 year olds, with minor adjustments depending on the age group. I derived the ideas for this talk from the allergysafecommunities.com website. The talk itself takes about 2 minutes, and I follow it with the Alexander the Elephant video which is approximately 10 mins. (you can order from Anaphylaxis Canada or AAIA). Here's my talk:

Good morning everyone. My name is Mrs. M. Many of you know my son in class ___.

This morning I came to talk to you about allergies.
- An allergy is what happens when our body doesn’t like something. We might get itchy or sneeze when we see a cat or smell flowers.
- But these are not serious allergies.

- There are some children in our school who have serious allergies.
- Their allergies are so serious that they could get very sick if they eat the wrong kind of food or get stung by a bee. An allergy to food is not the same as not liking the food. It is something serious that happens inside the body if a food the body is allergic to gets inside.

- You might be surprised that some of the foods that you love to eat can make other children very very sick. So sick that they might need to go to the hospital.
Who loves eggs?
Who loves peanut butter?
Who loves sesame seeds on a bagel or hamburger bun?
- Some children in our school are allergic to these foods.
- It is hard to imagine that something you enjoy as much as eggs, peanut butter or sesame seeds could make one of your friends so very sick.
- That doesn’t mean that these foods aren’t good for you if you are not allergic to them… they are! They just cannot be eaten by someone who is allergic to them.

- People who have allergies are no different from anyone else.
- You can’t tell if a person has serious allergies just by looking at them.
- They are just the same as you are.
- It’s just that some things that are good for you are not so good for them.
- Some simple things you can do to help keep your friends with food allergies safe are:
Always wash your hands and brush your teeth before you come to school.
Always wash your hands before and after you eat at school.
And never share your food with your friends at school

- Now we’re going to watch a short video about Alexander the Elephant who is allergic to peanuts.

Following the video:
- You can see from the video that we can all work together to keep our friends safe.
- Thank you for letting me speak to all of you today about food allergies!

Just realised... you're likely presenting to adults, right? Oops. Oh well, if the daycare would like you to present to the children, I suppose this might help you out! Good luck with your talk. Williamsmummy has some great suggestions!

I think most parents didn't realize what it involved dealing with many food allergies.

However, this kind of information is (unfortunately for me) easy to forget when it's not your child you're dealing with. So, I don't think it's going to make much of a difference when they come to daycare's parties and such, but at least they know, and will probably be more careful around my child.

I have presented to my childs school for years. In fact we have moved several times so I have had new schools to deal with each time.

I think it is best to always add a personal story of what happened. People do not realize how these allergies affect our children. Remeber to talk about what you do if and when you child is invited to a party so parents are not afraid to include them.

I did one presentation to the Grade 3 class with my daughter when she was 9 yrs old. The students asked us questions and we answered them. It is amazing what the kids think of. The kids are more accepting of the allergies than some of the parents and will remind the parents to not send nuts etc to school.

There are some great resources at Anaphylaxis Canada website. Some of the class lessons plans are great for adults too.

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